Getting Keratin early on?

[Mansen]

I foolishly decided to tame a Carbo (turtle) early on for its tough shell, good carrying capacity - and incredibly easy "main n' tame", since it's slow and easy to kite.

I'm not level 25 and have the recipe for the saddle, but I need a metric arse ton of keratin to make the paste for it, and I have so far not really looted much of it anywhere.

So what's the best way to get it? Pick hitting corpses of tough enemies like the carbo? I've tried going on an expedition for scorpions, but they live so far away from my base on the southwestern coast and seem to drop little to no keratin as well.

[PIXPEW]

use the tamed turtle to kill more turtles and trikes, and yes its a long farm =)

[Sai]

Trikes, turtles, stegos, and the likes.
That stuff is very easy to get, honestly.

Use a hatchet.

[Ajax]

Don't try to get keratin, you'll have more luck with chitin, you can go in a cave with some light armor and some tools, kill a bunch of spider then destroy their body with an axe and you'll get 8+ chitin per spider/scorpion killed...

[Mansen]

Kill - or loot? Because I am having no issues killing dinos right now - Bows and tall rocks work well. I just don't see many keratin drops at all. One in every four trikes is starting to annoy me more than a little.

I have so much raw meat and hide in my inventory that I could open a butcher shop.

Originally posted by Sai:

Trikes, turtles, stegos, and the likes.
That stuff is very easy to get, honestly.

Easy to kill mobs that drop it? Yes. Common drop? No...

Originally posted by Murlac:

Don't try to get keratin, you'll have more luck with chitin, you can go in a cave with some light armor and some tools, kill a bunch of spider then destroy their body with an axe and you'll get 8+ chitin per spider/scorpion killed...

Caves? I'll have to give that a try. Think there's one not far from where I live.

[Rook]

Metal tool or sabertooth really really make keratin much easier later on. For now supply drops for paste are a possibility depending on what level drops they come in (can't remember myself), or the low level cave is near the southern beach, or you could maybe do the one north of there.
I dunno how much use you'll get out of the turtle saddle though honestly, I'd probably take a trike over them and def take a raptor or scorp mount for regular playing around.

Turtles with a saddle are great as a leashing post for your dinos though if you set them on passive, mount, then call for all dinos to follow it.

[jeejeepower]

Definitly go in caves

[De Kus]

I think cementing paste is underrated in it's rarity. I think I can faster farm the ingredients for a T-Rex saddle than for a turtle saddle. Iron ingots are so easy to make as soon as you can safely climb the mountains and carry some stuff back. You don't need to fight, just stay alert.
However you cannot harvest 30 stone from a bolder like you can metal from a metal ore stone. Some beaches have lots of stones to collect, on these it's rather easy to get stone, but outside already making the stone is though. Not to mention the keratin from killing a turtle or trike is laughable compared to killing a scorpion or spider. But these only spawn in greater numbers in caves you don't to go into without a punching pack of dinos (a mate duo or Raptors is great). But again, these caves are raided for so many reasons it's probably on a populated server not reasonable to rely getting chitin from caves. In the end, everything requiring cementing paste is very expensive. Making a medium tier saddle suddenly is harder than making a high tier saddle that requires ingots and a smithy. So imho. the drop rate on keratin and the recipe costs with cementing paste should be rebalanced. Why are we not building metal walls? Because it needs cementing paste. Why are we not having many medium tier dinos with saddles? Because it's easier to make a Mammoth, Sabertooth, Carno or T-Rex saddle. But why are we having metal spikes around our base? Because getting iron ingots and fibre is rather easy, there was little hesitation (ironically the fibre was a bigger trouble... take a trike and 2 metal pickaxes, put 400 iron ore back and mix them with ~50 spark powder (50 flint + 25 stone which is about half the amount you get out of iron rocks anyway), wait for 200 iron ingots to finish.) while getting fibre is really taking a toll on your left index finger with all the pushing of E (remember you can harvest 20~40 iron ores with 1 long mouse click and you have to repush E when you picked up a stone or want to continue with the next bush).

Btw. the limiting factor for us is getting enough stone for the cementing paste... on our server the caves are not overfarmed, so we can make full cleans of them pretty quick. The resulting amout of chitin is plenty... but I am not sure that is the supposed way to make this stuff, considering there is keratin drop on easier and more wide spread targets. I'd recommend to buff the keratin drop rate on the turtles and increase the stone yield from hacking your hatchet on stones.